


no cities to love

by AvaRosier



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Clarke tops, F/F, also so much angst, with a strap on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-08
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-03-29 14:11:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3899254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaRosier/pseuds/AvaRosier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke makes her way to the sea and eventually, so too does Lexa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no cities to love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Timballisto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Timballisto/gifts), [SelectiveTaco](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SelectiveTaco/gifts).



> You can find me at tumblr under ava-rosier. Please direct your Howlers there. Also I headcanon Ming Na Wen as Luna in this one. Title and lyrics at the start from Sleater-Kinney.

 

**_It takes a lot for me see it_ **  
**_Hopes it better sets you free_ **  
**_I went it through the thought of you_ **  
**_I went it through the void of me_ **  
**_I’ve grown afraid of everything that I love_ **

 

* * *

 

 

When Clarke had arrived in Piina—the city upon the sea—two weeks before, it was the first time in so long that she’d allowed all the scabs around her soul to loosen and crumble. Smelling the salt in the air, seeing the endless expanse of dark blue water and pale blue sky, it’d almost been like that first breath she’d taken when the dropship doors opened. Piina is a city of ships: massive, interconnected ones that remind Clarke of the Ark in principle…military ships combined with passenger liners and smaller boats that move to and from the city, likely to bring in the day’s catches and patrol the waters.

She had been welcomed into the Great Hall inside what was once a cruise ship (her memory of Earth Media is spotty), into an audience with the fabled Luna. The Wada Kru customarily wore their long hair in elaborate updos that consisted of extensive braids, resembling nets. Luna was no exception, her inky black hair interwoven with dark ribbon and seashells. When Clarke had come before her in the Great Hall, with sunbeams casting heavy shadows where they did not lay, she had been struck by how different the reception had been compared to…to…

There are places in her memory she tries not to go.

Luna was at least her mother’s age, maybe older, though it was hard to tell on her. She was slim but carried visible signs that she was physically lethal. Her dark eyes told Clarke that she would suffer no guile, so Clarke was honest. Brutally so. But she was welcomed, for news had already reached them of the fall of the Mountain Men. So Clarke had finally found a respite, a place to be alone yet not alone for however long she should choose to.

She spends most of her days, when she isn’t helping their healers, sitting on the sand and staring at the massive body of water with awe. That she should see this in her lifetime was something she had never hoped for. The melancholy thoughts can’t help clawing their way into her mind, however.

She touches wet sand beneath her feet and wades out into the water as far as she dares, until she begins to question whether she could make her way back to shore. It’s strangely peaceful when she gives into her curiosity and submerges herself. Clarke can’t help but wonder as her lungs begin to agitate for oxygen, if she could just open her mouth and inhale. What would it feel like to swallow the ocean and drown? Free at last, without guilt or pain. Would it feel like being floated?

 

 

 

She takes lovers. It doesn’t feel strange to do so after having told Lexa she wasn’t ready. A lot of things, complicated emotions, had lain between her and someone she had still seen as an adversary even with the temporary, fragile truce that their peoples had had. After everything she has faced, Clarke feels alive and free and her shoulders are burdened only by her ghosts. There is a man named Amador who tolerates her curiosity with his closely shorn beard; then a woman named Ulia, whose freckles Clarke finds herself mapping out before she sleeps and dreams of floating amidst the constellations.

 

 

 

Two weeks.

She gets two weeks of trying not to wonder how it’s going for her mom and friends in Camp Jaha, of wondering if some of them are still glad she’s gone, before Luna summons her to her private cabin. The furniture is stately, the materials worn down with age and patched over in places. Luna invites Clarke to sit at the table and share a cup of tea. The brew is bitter but sweetened with some kind of honey.

“I respect you, Clarke.” She says, at last. The words send a frisson of fear through her.

“And I you,  _Miira_  Luna.”

Luna sets her cup down on the table. “I wished to inform you that circumstances have drastically changed in the past few weeks. Lexa, formerly  _Heda_  of the twelve clans, has arrived in Piina seeking sanctuary and anonymity. It seems that her choices, while in the best interests of her people at the time, proved short-sighted and the other clan leaders have sought to depose her. Her second in command spared her life and I granted Lexa’s request.”

It would have been difficult for Luna to not have noticed the subtext of emotion in Clarke’s voice when she had told the  _Miira_ about the alliance and the betrayal. The news sends a ripple of worry through Clarke for her people; she has no clue who is in charge of the TriKru now but it would likely mean more danger for her people. “I see, thank you.”

She has no appetite that night, a convoluted ball of emotion and frustration. She’d been too shocked by the news to ask Luna if Lexa was aware of her presence in Piina. Her dreams in the next few days are fraught by the smell of burnt flesh and children rotting in their nice clothes at grand dining tables. Clarke had been doing a great job of emptying herself of emotions where Lexa was concerned. And maybe it’s petty of her, but she doesn’t want to be the one who gives in and seeks Lexa out. That in itself would be message enough.

But she is here, in Piina. She is  _here_  and Clarke can’t erase her from the fringes of her mind, like a half shaded-in drawing she’d never gotten around to finishing. She finds herself wondering, as she makes her rounds helping the healers, where Lexa is at that very moment. What she is doing. How she is coping with her fall from grace. If she went and was in Lexa’s presence, would Lexa try to aplogize? To bring up the betrayal? It makes her so unbelievably  _angry_  that she can’t let go. The fixation of her mind pushes all these feelings out against her ribcage, making it harder to breathe.

 

 

Lexa comes to her first.

Clarke turns around in the healer’s cabin and there she is, like a punch to the gut. Looking softer now that she was devoid of the trappings of her authority. Just a peasant girl with a rag over her loose hair and nary a dagger in sight. She hovers, uncertain, on the threshold before remembering something of herself and straightening her spine. With the raise of her jaw and the steeling of her eyes, Clarke wonders if  _this_  was Lexa or if this was an echo of the Commander. Was there even a difference anymore?

“Hello, Clarke.”

She remains mulishly silent, tidying up her station even though it was unnecessary. Lexa looks away for a moment, giving a small sigh of frustration. This irritates Clarke because she owes Lexa nothing. She hates, hates,  _hates_  the way Lexa looks so vulnerable and it’s tugging on her heart when she thought she’d have more control than this.

“I’m glad you are alive and well, Clarke. When I saw you last, I knew you would not stop trying to save your people. I feared—“ she breaks off, gulping to restrain the emotions flickering across her face. “I feared that you would perish in the mountain. I can only hope that someday you’ll understand why I—“

“Oh, I understand, Lexa. But understanding’s not the same as forgiveness.” She interrupts Lexa, turning to face her. Clarke’s father’s words echo in her head. She’s simply not ready to forgive Lexa for her own sake. To forgive would mean to walk through the gauntlet of the pain once again, and let it go. Clarke doesn’t want to let go; she wants to be angry and she wants to scream and make things break for the atavistic joy of it all. “You owed me nothing. The Wallaces could offer you a more lucrative deal than I could. Sorry it didn’t work out for you or everything you had built with the alliance.”

The biting, bitter words hit their mark and Lexa’s jaw clenches, lips forming that familiar sneer Clarke had seen the first day they had met. “I would think this pettiness beneath you, Clarke.”

“Clearly it’s not.” Clarke retorts dryly, raising her eyebrows. The fury that blooms in her overpowers all common sense and Clarke takes one step, then another and another towards Lexa. Eye to eye, she sees Lexa blink at the sudden invasion of her space, but unlike that day in her tent, Lexa doesn’t stumble backwards. She meets Clarke’s challenge with an unblinking stare. Not aggressive, but not backing down either.

It’s a miscalculation on Clarke’s part that forces her to endure the nearness, the warmth exuding from Lexa’s body. The sweet skitter of breath across her cheek. It’s unbearable. “Leave, please.” Her pride crumbles in her voice, and Clarke hates the pleading lilt.

“Very well.” Lexa is gone so quickly, Clarke almost thinks she was a mirage in the early morning fog. She feels the dampness all the way to her bones.

 

 

They avoid each other for days.

 

 

She doesn’t feel right seeking Ulia out like this, so she returns to Amador, who accepts the brunt of her anger without question. He lets her set the tempo, the intensity of their coupling. She’s quiet, swallowing her moans until she nearly suffocates. It pushes her to the edge sooner. Amador has a bottle of something that burns as it slides down her throat, makes all the memories become distant; make all the violent colors that outline Clarke Griffin melt and run together. He fucks her. She fucks him. He teases out orgasm after trembling orgasm until she’s reduced to this  _creature_  that exists on the edge of ecstasy and oblivion.

 

 

She should return to Camp Jaha. She  _needs_  to return to Camp Jaha. But she can’t because there is an enormous hurdle she has to scale before she can move on.

 

 

Two days later, a storm reaches their shore.

As the thunder rolls through her, rattling her bones, Clarke feels for a moment as though something were shattering inside her…dislodging all the things she was keeping buried. Brittle winds make the metal framework of the ship creak and it bobbles unsteadily upon the building waves. She stands outside, before the railing, and faces the storm. With the torrential rains pelting her face, soaking her clothing and skin, she thinks for a moment about giving in and letting the tears roll amongst the camouflage.

She had struggled to understand how Finn could have done what he did. But then she had walked a mile in his shoes, made the same utilitarian decisions for the sake of keeping her soldiers alive. He had executed a man because they could not afford to keep him prisoner or lose fighters going forward, not with dozens of lives at stake; Clarke had let a village burn for Bellamy, all to save those very same people. And then she finally understood that Finn had been in a lose-lose situation from the very start, outnumbered and only able to react to sudden threats…and so she murdered hundreds of defenceless people to win a war of attrition.

Clarke had been right, when she had told Finn that what they did, it didn’t define them. It affects them, but it doesn’t become who they are. If Finn could still make the kinds of choices that defined him, even after the massacre…the choices that she had loved him for…then in that way he had been redeemed. And if he could be redeemed, then someday, perhaps so could she.

It’s not like there was anyone left alive to demand her blood for those of the dead in the mountain, at any rate. She had killed them all.

 

 

Lexa had not argued with Clarke once, she had just accepted her fate in Clarke’s heart. Perhaps that was what made the obsession grow worse. She falls asleep to the memory of Lexa’s thick hair beneath her fingers, her slim body pressed lightly against Clarke’s front, and the gentle, chapped slide of her lips. In the darkness before dawn, when the hollow emptiness threatens to swallow her whole, Clarke thinks about the way Lexa had stumbled backwards into a table while Clarke had crowded her, full of righteous anger, and called her a liar.

She had never felt such control over the great  _Heda_  of the twelve clans.

The thought grows exponentially within her until she can imagine nothing else. Ulia is a free spirit and because they share no promises between them, Clarke asks her for one thing which Ulia readily gives. Clarke carries it inside her bag, next to her herbs and bandages, across the decks and makeshift bridges that connect the ships to one other. She carries it directly to Lexa’s cabin. It’d been an accident that she’d even discovered where it was.  

Clarke sits on the bed and then she waits.

Lexa returns to her cabin, stopping dead in her tracks when she notices she isn’t alone in the small, bare room. Clarke doesn’t know what Lexa does for food, maybe she doesn’t care right now. “Clarke?”

“I trusted you. I started to feel things for you. And you broke that trust and left me standing there alone.”

“Clarke—“

“ _No_. I’m talking now.” She insists in a low voice and Lexa quiets, standing before the bed. “I wasn’t lying when I said I could understand why you did it. You were never  _Lexa_ ; you could never be Lexa; you had to be the Commander. And as long as you were the Commander, it would always have been a matter of waiting for you to betray me.”

“And now?” Lexa chances to ask.

“We will never be what we were.” There’s simplicity in her honesty. Lexa accepts the verdict with a stoic clench of her jaw, but her eyes betray the loss she so clearly feels. It’s almost enough to make Clarke feel guilty, but it’s also easy for her to shove that particular emotion aside. She rises off the bed and stands so near Lexa that their breasts almost touch.

“But you’re no longer a Commander of a single clan, let alone twelve, Lexa. And I’m in charge of no one right now. Don’t you want a taste of what we will never have again?” She bends low and with her tongue tastes the sea on Lexa’s neck. Her pulse jumps against her throat and Clarke places careful, close-mouthed kisses up the column of Lexa’s neck, exulting in the shallow breaths there.

Lexa’s eyes are closed, and in the late afternoon light emanating in through the window, she looks like something Clarke will sketch out dozens of times from memory. Then she opens her eyes, blinking with widened pupils. “If that will make you feel better…then yes.” Clarke’s mind flashes back to the wreckage after the TonDC bombing and perhaps that’s what gives her the courage to continue.

She turns back to the bed and opens her bag, pulling out the item she’d borrowed from Ulia. The shaft is smooth, made with care, and attached to a network of straps. From the sharp intake of breath, Lexa knows what it is. Facing her again, Clarke arches an eyebrow, serious.

“But we will do this on my terms.”

Lexa looks… _wild_ …for a second before she schools her expression once more. Maybe she was asking too much of Lexa and Clarke goes to gather up her things when Lexa answers her again. “Yes.”

The concession surprises Clarke as much as it surprises Lexa herself, but all of that pales before the thrill that grips her belly at the sense of power she experiences right then. That tantalizing hint of control. Lexa steps up to her, cupping Clarke’s jaw, intending to taste again what she’d had so briefly before. Clarke turns her head so the kiss stops scant centimetres from her cheek. Instead, she begins tugging off her top, followed by her bra.

She catches the disappointment on Lexa’s face even as she drinks in the details of Clarke’s bared body hungrily. “Clothes, off.” Clarke prods her as she undoes the button on her trousers. Lexa hesitates for a second before following behind. She is slim, all lean muscle and graceful lines. Long-limbed in the legs and with small, but high breasts. She watches with her mouth open a fraction as Clarke, naked at last, starts doing up the straps.

She wants this, she does. But if she lets down her guard right now, she’ll break. Lexa readily allows herself to be borne back on the bed, for Clarke to take strips of cloths and tie her wrists and ankles to the bedposts. “Do you still trust me?” She asks Lexa.

“Yes, still. Even if I cannot expect it in return.”

Clarke lies on her stomach before Lexa’s parted thighs while the other woman tugs experimentally on the binds. It’s been such a long time, it seems, since she had tasted this last, inhaled this heavy scent. Clarke braces her hand against twitching muscles and takes long, slow licks, acclimating herself. She takes her time, claiming a victory every time Lexa lets out a helpless noise. She gets the pale pink of vulva before her wet from both her tongue and Lexa’s own arousal before she darts up and begins to mercilessly tease the clitoris. Lexa’s eyes are half-lidded, and the look on her face is of such exquisite agony.

She’s beautiful like this, vulnerable.

Clarke brings her over the edge right then, limbs jerking in their captivity. Nothing to do but let yourself fall. Lexa is trembling as Clarke dots light kisses along her belly, and tongues at a nipple. She unties Lexa’s arms first, before tugging the knots loose at the foot of the bed. Soon she kneels over Lexa and allows her to reach up and touch Clarke’s body. When Lexa cups her breasts, lightly massaging the heavier weights in the palm of her hand, Clarke lets her pelvis drop down. She ruts her arousal, and her cock, against the taut skin of Lexa’s belly.

Clarke is in charge tonight. “Turn over.” She commands. Lexa holds her gaze for a moment before she obeys. Clarke is immediately enraptured by the inky black block letters, in an unfamiliar script, that follow the line of Lexa’s spine. Lexa raises herself up onto her hands and knees, ass in the air.

“Good girl,” Clarke murmurs throatily as she bends over her back and grips Lexa’s hips underneath her hand. She lines herself up and slides her cock inside Lexa, who takes it all with a graceful arch of her back. Clarke holds her still and rotates her hips, which nearly sends Lexa crashing down on the bed.

“Clarke—“

Clarke shushes her and sets a steady rhythm, gradually building up speed until Lexa is pushing herself back into Clarke with equal intensity. The temptation is too much to bear and Clarke runs her nails down Lexa’s back, leaving red welts in her wake. The effect is immediate, Lexa moans lowly and her rhythm stutters as she reaches down between her legs—

“No.” Clarke stops and grabs Lexa’s arm, preventing her from manipulating herself to orgasm. Lexa lets out what could only be described as a small roar, kicking out from under Clarke until she could sit before her, panting and looking utterly outraged. Clarke imagines it’s been a long time since anyone denied Lexa control like this. The thought makes her inexplicably happy. She smiles at Lexa and lies back on the bed, patting at her upper thighs.

“Not yet. Now, you’ve been riding horses for a long time; show me how good your gait is.” Clarke can see the pursed lips, the flaring of nostrils, and knows that Lexa is strongly contemplating stopping all this. But she doesn’t. Instead, she glares defiantly and tilts her chin upwards even as she gracefully swings her leg over Clarke’s hips. She grips the cock, wet with her own fluids, and lowers herself slowly down onto it.

Then she leans forward until she finds the angle she likes, and begins to roll her hips, riding Clarke with a slow, sure cant. She keeps her eyes on Clarke’s own, challenging her. Clarke can feel the strap rubbing itself between her vulva with the back-and-forth drag of Lexa’s body and she’s already so high on the power she feels she thinks she could come this way. But she doesn’t let herself. Not yet.

Lexa looks so regal when she’s trying to hold onto her control, and for that reason, Clarke starts to touch her lazily. Light fingertips grazing their way over Lexa’s thighs. A soft caress of her breasts before a sharp, quick pinch to the nipples that has Lexa grinding down on the  cock, gasping. She nearly knocks Clarke’s hands away.

She fucks herself angrily, then, bending lower until she is nearly parallel to Clarke’s body. The bedsprings squeak from the force of her motions. She tries, once more, to reach down between her legs to finish it. Once more, Clarke stops her. Lexa lets out a whine of frustration. Her cheeks are pink and her hair a wild riot of curls as she runs a hand through it.

“Does Clarke of the Sky People give me permission to touch my own breasts?” Lexa asks her impudently.

“You may,” Clarke tells her cheekily. “Let me worry about this.” She places a careful thumb against the matted hair at the junction of Lexa’s thighs, above where the smooth wooden cock splits her open, and begins to gently rub. Lexa jerks at the sensation, eyes drifting shut. She leans backward and begins rotating herself on the cock, into Clarke’s thumb.

When Lexa flies apart on top of Clarke, her mouth drops open and her eyebrows furrow in pleasure and surrender. She’s glorious to watch as she spasms and lets out high, breathy moans. Finally, she bends over and rides the last vestiges of her orgasm pressed breast to belly with Clarke. For her part, Clarke continues to rub her fingers between Lexa’s legs until she sees the uncontrollable tears begin to fall against her neck.

She stops then, feeling an unexpected swell of tenderness. Clarke lets herself curl her arms around Lexa’s shaking body while she breathes heavily into the crook of her neck.  “You never let anyone see you like this, do you?” She asks.

“None but you,” is Lexa’s eventual answer once she has her voice back.

Minutes later, Clarke offers up no fight when Lexa reaches down between their bodies and tugs apart the straps around her hips. The cock hits the floor beside the bed with a dull thunk and then two fingers are reaching down between Clarke’s thighs. Lexa lets out a sigh, perhaps of relief, when she encounters the slickness there. She wastes no time, rubbing those fingers in steady circles while Clarke rocks up against them, feeling the rapid buildup of pleasure.

She clutches at Lexa’s shoulders, arches her breasts until she feels the erotic scrape of nipples against her own, and combs her fingers through Lexa’s hair until it covers her own torso. Soon enough, Clarke starts to buck under Lexa’s weight and once more, the lines of her pride begin to bleed away.

Lexa kisses her then, soft and sweetly, leaving tingles in her wake. Clarke lets out a moan into Lexa’s mouth as those maddening fingers rub faster, harder. And then she splinters apart, the ripples nearly taking her away if it wasn’t for Lexa anchoring her to the bed. She strains again and again, riding the aftershocks of her orgasm.  She doesn’t allow herself to think, or even open her eyes, as Lexa peppers kisses over her face, her lips.  Butterfly soft and with more kindness than Clarke perhaps wants or deserves at that moment.

They don’t dare speak a single word as they tug the blanket off the bed and curl up beneath it. The silky, short hairs on their lower legs brush against one other. As long as they don’t speak, none of those things that happened, happened; they can remain in this small, undefined country.

 

Clarke is unable to sleep, though, and gets up to stand before the open window, watching the heavy moon on what is a clear night. She almost thinks she can see a blank spot where her home had once been. Clarke feels calm now. Not at peace; just calm. Lexa’s sleep-roughened voice calls from the bed.

“If you had the choice, would you give all this up to be back amongst the stars again?” Clarke contemplates the possibility for a moment. To not be running out of air? To have her dad alive again and Wells at her side? To have Finn and Raven happy together on another station even though it would probably mean they would never meet Clarke? To not be faced with a series of impossible choices that demanded monstrous things of her? She turns to face Lexa in the dark.

“Do you really want to know the answer to that?”

Her silence is enough.

 

It’s early in the morning and still dark outside when Clarke returns to her cabin. She makes it through the door, closes it, then slides down it and lets her entire body shake with the force of her sobs. She cries, and cries for the girl she had once been, whose innocence had been drowned in blood and ground into the dust of the earth. She cries for what would never be; what should have been. The unfairness of it all.

And when she stills in the early morning light, Clarke looks around the quiet, dark room and feels so utterly small. Finally, she accepts that these are the things she had done. That she wasn’t her father’s daughter anymore, but maybe she could still be her mother’s, and that no longer horrified her. Maybe it’s an injustice that she lives still, but it was one she would have to try to make worthwhile.

Clarke leaves Piina the day after she leaves Lexa in bed, pretending to sleep. She goes to Luna and informs the leader that she would be taking her leave. She’s not going…she’s not going home empty-handed. Rolled up inside her knapsack are the details of an alliance between their peoples. It’s not much, but given the current uncertainty, it might mean everything. God, they’d been such stupid children, talking about war without contemplating for a second that they might be utterly outnumbered.

She smiles wryly and offers up a benediction into the Deep.  _You were right, Finn. If only we’d listened to you more_. _I’ll do my best to see them the way you did._  But this is what they’ve got right now. If onlys won’t help them survive their first winter on the ground. At the top of the hill, Clarke turns around and takes a last look at the sea. She hopes she can see it again.

She almost imagines she sees a familiar figure standing at the bow of one of the ships.

 

 

 

Once, before the Cataclysm had obliterated nearly everything, there had been great cities. Clarke had seen them in pictures and movies in the Ark’s libraries. Cities full of millions of people; cities that had taken hundreds, even thousands of years to become what they did. Alive and vibrant with distinct cultures competing for space. To young, bored Clarke, these cities had just been dots on a map; arbitrary lines denoting ‘us’ and ‘them’.

 _If I had met you in one of those cities, would it have turned out any different for us?_  Was there a city where she and Lexa could have been happy? A city for her and Finn? Would there ever be?

Washington D.C. had once been the seat of such power, a sprawling metropolis. Then it was reduced to a village that was barely even a shade of its memory. And now even that village had been consumed by fire, to be rebuilt again. How many lives could a phoenix have? Clarke had lived in a city, floating amongst the stars, and it had burned in re-entry. The broken fragments are being turned into a new home, for now at any rate. Maybe that was all love could ever be, in the grand scheme of things: a memory.

All things fade, its memory is what remains.


End file.
